What Happened to the Features?

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August 7, 2014 - 10:00pm -- Lee B.

We have many great features in Guild Wars 2 like dungeons, legendries, PvP and WvW. This is only a small part of a list of features that have been in the game since release. We also have had new features implemented like Fractals of the Mists and Edge of the Mists. All of these features have been added and (for the most part) bugs have been ironed out. Now that we are hitting our second anniversary of Guild Wars 2 at the end of the month and it is important to say that these features have largely remained unchanged since their release.

If you’re a veteran player you have to have the feeling that by now you have done it all. Dungeons and Fractals of the Mists are little more than a series of short cuts and ways to bend the AI to your whim. Crafting and legendries mean almost nothing due to the excess of materials you have likely accumulated and the fact we’ve had plenty of time to get the legendries we want. The only real challenges for a veteran are in PvP and WvW but those haven’t really been expanded on except to add or remove a map and change stats of classes.

The only thing we have seen truly expanded on is crafting. We had the introduction of Ascended crafting and the addition of many new recipes. The problem with this is that while it extended the game it only did it by giving us yet another skin, food or set of stats to work for. Crafting has only just given us something to spend our time on and not give us any new experiences.

You might be saying right now that this new Living World season has been giving us plenty of expansion on PvE features. It has but it has been at a slow enough pace that most veterans are able to experience most of the content by the time the next release hits. It isn’t fulfilling and it certainly isn’t expanding the depth of the game except for two weeks at a time. You don't need to really think too hard about strategy or exploring the best ways of cutting through the story. The instanced stories do provide a minor amount of challenge but nothing that will warrant theory crafting or weeks of play time.

We need new, real content in the game that will give us something to chew over for some time. It doesn’t even have to be all new maps, dungeons or Fractals either. Would it be hard to give us Hard Mode and upscale any dungeon to have level 80 or 90 enemies? Could we get more Guild Missions? It would be really great just to have a team death match mode in PvP too.

The point of the matter is that it has been a long time since we have seen any new, deep features. All we have are words that new things are in the pipes. Hopefully we will see these updates in the break ArenaNet has said they will be doing after the next Living World update. It is frustrating that all we have is this most recent comment by Evan Lesh, in reference to new PvP features, to hold us over.

Nope, not on autopilot. Nope, not designed by one designer. I Promise features are coming eventually. I want them finished and as badly as you do!

We need to see a fully fleshed out addition to keep players actively invested in the game again. Not just endless promises that something is coming.